On the first Friday of each month the ladies will be posting a new creative adventure and for this first month they want us to try something new, something we have never done before....

I did this piece a couple of weeks ago and have been pondering as to whether

to show it or not, I am really not happy with it but, hey, I tried something new!

I have seen a few people using wax recently, in different ways. I do have a melt pot gathering dust and some beeswax waiting to be opened but I wasn't sure about doing that. I have had a box of children's crayons for ages in my stash, and I just thought..... I wonder if..... could I just use the crayons and a heat tool and make something..... here is the result..... for better or worse...

I used a 6" x 6" wooden base and melted three different colours of blue crayon onto it. Once it was covered I just heated the whole thing again until it was quite liquid and then left it to dry. It only takes minutes to dry.

I do NOT recommend the next step but I took a large metal bodkin needle, heated it and picked up some green crayon and fashioned it into stalks.... it took a long time and it wasn't easy, but experimenting is fun!

Next, I held the heat gun over a red crayon and I just let the drops land wherever they wanted. I did the same with the black centres, it was a bit trickier getting the blobs to go where I wanted them to... To finish off, I flicked some white gesso over it to add some light here and there.

I know, I know, I am sorry, it is hardly a piece of art but I was pleased that I at least had a go at something completely different and it has made me want to get my melt pot out again, dust off the beeswax and have a go, perhaps, at creating a collage. So thank you ladies at Creative Carte Blanche, I would never have tried using wax, without your prompt!

Thanks for looking, please don't feel you need to comment, it was purely an experiment!

Thursday, 25 February 2016

It is hard to believe that February is nearly over! This is just a quick post to share my Tim Tag for February. You can find Tim's wonderful original tag HERE.

While I am here, I would like to thank the DT at Indigo Blu for choosing my project here, in their Top 3, it is always so uplifting when others like your work! Thank you ladies!

I wanted to use my new stencils to create my tag, I love the size of the new stencils, they fit perfectly onto a No. 8 Ranger tag.

I applied some Tea Dye Distress Stain to my tag first, as Tim did, to give a 'base' colour to work on. I used the Monoprint Technique with the 'crosses' stencil and Distress Ink in Walnut Stain, Vintage Photo and Broken China. It turned out a little darker than I wanted so I did not do an extra layer of stencilling on my version.

Using the 'word' stencil I applied Ranger Texture Paste followed by Ranger Copper Embossing Powder, following Tim's Embossed Texture Paste Technique, the Copper is a beautiful rich colour.

I chose and added my embellishments to finish off my tag.

Many of you know already, but I was incredibly lucky to see, meet and take a class with Tim Holtz at CHSI Stitches show this week. I think you all know how much I love Tim and his products but after meeting him I have a new-found respect for the man. He is just the nicest, kindest and friendliest people you could ever meet - such a talented and knowledgeable young man. Mario is just adorable too, nothing was too much trouble for either of them.

We had a choice of projects to make, I just love the young man and his dog and I used 'time 4' to represent Time for Tim. I have some wonderful memories of the day, not least of which was time spent with two of my crafting besties - Kath Stewart and Jenny (Buttons) Marples.

Kath, me, Jenny and the 'Professor' himself at the front.

And as if that was not enough, I went back on the Monday and visited Tim on his demo stand and he kindly posed with me for another photo, it was early and quiet and I had him all to myself for a whole demo, how lucky was I??

It was lovely to meet up with some of my AVJ Teamies too, Brenda Brown and Nikki Acton, DecoArt's Julia Stratford-Wright, the fabulous Andy Skinner, Nikki's lovely friend Cathryn, Enfys and Hina from Fiskars, the wonderfully talented Kassa Hayseldon, also, Kay, Alfie, Elizabeth and Cheremane, all from IndigoBlu. I also got to meet the lovely Trish Latimer from Craft Stamper and Fran Seiford from Stampendous. Apologies if I forgot anyone! Thank you to all of you for making the visit even more special!

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

All this week, Eileen Hull and Stampendous are having a week long blog hop called 'Along the Garden Path' and we were all given a stamp/die set to use. I used the stamp set in two quite different ways, just to show their versatility.

For my first project I made a little cottage.

The size of the door and windows lent themselves well to Eileen Hull's Artist Trading Block/Cube die (Sizzix 658984) - the middle size block was perfect as my base. I used the block to measure out the size of the cottage.

After stamping the elements with Ranger Black Archival ink I then used DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic paint in Titan Buff and Burnt Umber to colour the door and window frames. The bricks were coloured with English Red Oxide.

I cut the roof piece as shown.

Next, I coloured a piece of card with Paynes Grey paint and then stamped the small circle in rows.

I cut and trimmed each row of circles to form 'tiles' for the roof and glued these to my roof piece, adding a row of circles for the ridge piece on top of the roof.

To give some stability to the roof and also give me a place to glue the roof to, I added some cross pieces.

To finish off I stamped out the flowers and the picket fence, coloured these with Tim Holtz Distress Markers, fussy cut them and added them to my project.

Here is the stamp set that I used (Mushroom House 50317), I did not use the dies on this occasion. Creating the cottage is probably the way the stamps were intended to be used but I made another quite different project.

Using Eileen Hull's Passport die (Sizzix 660331) I cut the cover from some card that I prepared using DecoArt Media Fluid Paints and Andy Skinner's Industrial stamp set.

I took the two circles stamps from the Stampendous set and stamped using Black and White Gesso. I added some Tim Holtz chit chat stickers to finish off.

We hope you will join in the blog hop, there are prizes to be won! You can check out this week's other posts from:

And finally, I had the pleasure of meeting the fabulous Fran Seiford of Stampendous at CHSI Stitches this week. I am a great admirer of Fran's Frantage products and it was so lovely to meet her and get a signed copy of Fran's book - Embossing Powder Techniques from A to Z.

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

Eileen Hull has challenged her Inspiration Team to make something CAS - Clean and Simple, something that can be done in about 10 - 15 minutes - now I am a pretty slow crafter so this was quite a challenge! There was nothing for it but to get my overflowing 'bit box' out and have a rummage.

I gave it my best shot but ended up on the 15 minute side of the time limit, but what I did learn is that preparation is the key and with a little effort it is achievable! The background I used was made with DecoArt Mixed Media Fluid paints along with Andy Skinner's Industrial stamp set.
I started with a piece of left-over background card (that I created for a project which will appear later this month) and an Eileen Hull for Sizzix Recipe Box (659876) die cut. These boxes go together very quickly, with just two edges to glue. I made up a few of these a while back and had already painted this one with Deco Art black Gesso. If I was doing another one, I would only paint the edges of the box, as the rest is not going to show.

I turned the background card over and used a blank die cut box, laid this over the card and drew around the edges to create a cover for my box. You could, of course, sit and measure each piece and cut carefully around the pieces but I find if you cut a faction 'inside' your lines, it works just as well and is much quicker - and I was under time pressure!

Once I had cut all my pieces, I went around the edges with a black Promarker, simply because I hate white edges but if I had left out this step, it would have saved me some time.

I then took some strong wet glue and glued all the pieces to my box.

The metal embellishment on the front would normally be attached with brads but for quickness I attached mine with strong wet glue. It looked a little 'bare' so I attached a crackled heart from my left-over box, I like the pop of red against the blue background.

So there you have it, not traditionally CAS but definitely quick and easy!

Friday, 5 February 2016

In Sara's own words - "To celebrate St. Valentine's Day, we would like to see you make a Grungy Valentine's project for your sweetheart! It can be a card, tag, or anything else you might give a loved one to show them how much you care. Just make sure it's grungy!"

For my Sweetheart's Valentine creation I used a 6 inch square wood base (purchased from Indigo Blu), lots of paint in some of his favourite colours, some random stamping, a grungy crackled heart and some 'industrial' embellishing.

I gathered together some of the items I wanted to use. DecoArt Media Gesso in white, Indigo Blu Gesso (Gee-so-good) in black and my favourite background stamps, Rugged Edge by Limor Webber for Indigo Blu.

I painted the wood board with a good layer of the white gesso and once dry I added a few pieces of Tim Holtz tissue tape.

I then added some colour, not too heavy, I just lightly loaded my brush, first with Tim Holtz Distress Paint in Scattered Straw and then some Indigo Blu English Cottage acrylic paint in 'Grandma's Teacup' - this paint goes a long, long way and you only need a tiny amount.

It was a bit too blue for my liking so I added some more of the white gesso to knock back the colour a little bit. Next, I took a couple of the stamps and stamped randomly using the Indigo Blu black gesso. I still wasn't entirely happy so I got out my Andy Skinner Industrial set of stamps and I stamped randomly over the entire board, using Wendy Vecchi's Archival Ink in Watering Can. I love the way the gesso stamping comes to the fore and is slightly dimensional - and the Archival Ink stamping goes to the back. I am happy with my background now.

Next up is the heart embellishment. I cut a heart freehand and coated it with the Indigo Blu gesso in black. Once dry I added a coat of my favourite crackle medium - Weathered Wood by DecoArt.

Once the heart was dry I painted the heart with DecoArt Qunacridone Magenta Media Fluid Acrylic, with just a tiny drop of Paynes Grey added in to give the heart a slightly more grungy look.

As with all crackle techniques it is best to 'seal' the crackle and I used the DecoArt Ultra-Matt Varnish, it really does give a beautiful matt finish.

To grunge the heart a little more I twisted some black wire and added two lengths to my heart.

I thought the base looked a little bare so I added some cogs to two of the corners. The cogs were cut from some thick card using my new Memory Box Cog die.

To make the heart 'pop' a bit more I went all around the outside edge of the heart with a charcoal pencil and then smudged it with my finger. In real life it makes the heart look really dimensional.

To finish off I added some chit chat words by Tim Holtz.

I hope you like my grungy, masculine Valentine Project and I hope you will join us at Anything But Cute this month in our 'Grungy Love' mixed media challenge.

The talented Tracy's 'Industrial' theme at A Vintage Journey was perfect for me as I needed a birthday card for my Brother who has retired from the Navy.

Here is what Tracy had to say....
Use your foil tape, or metallic card stocks with your texture fades/embossing folders
to create an Industrial creation of your own. Whether it's a background or bloom or anything,
don't limit your paint colour to black - the Industrious technique looks great
with all colours of paint.

To create the background I used a piece of cream card and Tim's Spritz and Flick technique with Tea Dye Distress Stain and when it was dry I added some splatters with Ground Espresso Distress Paint.

To create the industrious layers I used Ranger's foil sheets adhered to some black cardstock and these were passed through two different Texture Fade embossing folders (by Tim Holtz) and then I applied Tim's Industrious Technique (as used by Tim for his January tag) which you can see demonstrated by Tim here. I just love the way the red has turned out - I used Festive Berries Distress Paint.

For the 'birthday' sentiment I used Tim's Alphanumeric die set, cut from black card and backed onto an offcut from the base card. The 'wishes' is one of Tim's chitchat stickers.

This really was a quick an easy card to make. I mounted it onto black card and then onto a cream card base, edged with Tea Dye Distress Ink.

We hope you will join in this month at A Vintage Journey, as usual there is a £20 voucher from Countryview Crafts for one randomly drawn individual and the Creative Guides will choose